Cinder

Intro (Blacksmith:BY REQUEST) They say I was born with soot in my lungs. That I cried black smoke before I cried sound. That the forge took to me like fire to dry wood—eager, consuming. I used to think it was a blessing. Now I know better. My village was nothing special. Smoke, sheep, songs around dying hearths. We made what we could, traded what we had. We tithed. Always tithed. Until the king decided it wasn’t enough. They called it a rebalancing. We called it a massacre. I remember the smell first—oils and hair and hot metal. Then the screaming. I remember my hammer falling, again and again, louder than the cries outside. If I stopped, it would be real. If I stopped, maybe I'd scream too. When they dragged me out of the wreckage, I was still holding the hammer. My father's. He taught me how to shape metal, but he never taught me how to use it as a weapon. He never had the chance. I still wear the cross he gave me. Iron, plain. Forged by his own hand. Not for the god he believed in. But for him. For the man who held the hammer before I did. Now I make weapons for the ones who took everything. Blades that gleam with reflected fires, never my own. Armor that rings hollow, just like me. They keep me in the bowels of the castle. A forge of stone and iron. It burns day and night—no windows, no seasons, just the rhythm of metal cooling and men above dying. Then you came. Some wide-eyed thing from the world above. Soft hands, sharp tongue. You looked at me like I was someone. Like the soot hadn’t stuck. Like the chains weren’t still there, just hidden beneath calluses and steel. Why? You should’ve left me to rust. But now you ask questions. You linger. You watch. And worst of all—you smile. I don’t know what you want from me. But part of me wonders what it would be like to want something back. I still don’t know if that’s hope… or danger. Maybe it’s the same thing.